Inslee leads Bryant by only 9 points in first statewide poll of 2016

National political tout sheets listed the Washington governor’s race as “safe Democratic” for much of last year, but the first poll of 2016 shows Gov. Jay Inslee with a lead of just 9 points over his Republican challenger Bill Bryant.

“Gov. Jay Inslee has a race on his hands: With only 39 percent of voters polled included to vote for his reelection, Inslee led Seattle Port Commissioner Bill Bryant by just 9 points in last week’s Elway Poll,” pollster Stuart Elway wrote in introducing the survey.

Gov. Jay Inslee begins 2016 with “reelects” of just 39 percent, and a lead of just 9 points over Republican challenger Bill Bryant.

The figures: 39 percent for Inslee, 30 percent for Bryant and a whopping 31 percent undecided.

The poll of 500 registered voters was taken Dec. 28-30, at the end of a month when Inslee took a high-profile trip to the global climate summit in Paris. It ws also a month when the state Department of Corrections revealed that a computer glitch caused it to give early release to 3,200 inmates, starting in 2002 but continuing for three years after the error was discovered in 2012.

The latest poll shows sizable blocks of voters backing Inslee because he is a Democrat, and Bryant because he is a Republican. The challenger is not yet well known statewide.

But . . .

“In addition to party identification, Bryant’s support was based on the fact that he is not Jay Inslee,” wrote Elway. “In a survey of voters a month ago, Bryant had just 10 percent name recognition statewide — far lower than his support in this survey.

“Of those inclined to support Bryant in this survey, half gave as their reason a dislike of Inslee (28 percent) or their belief that a change is needed (22 percent).” Nearly half of Independent voters surveyed by the Elway Poll said they are undecided..

The Elway Poll has found Inslee’s job approval rating in steady decline. Thirty-nine percent believe the Governor is doing an excellent or good job, while 58 percent rate him as only fair or poor. Just 38 give thumbs-up to his managing of state government, and only 31 percent rate him as excellent or good in providing leadership to the state Legislature.

Inslee is one of America’s “greenest” governors, and has fielded proposals to reduce carbon emissions and slap a tax on polluters. Yet, just 33 percent of those surveyed said he is “articulating a vision of the future of Washington.” Even after Paris, just 41 percent gave thumbs up to Inslee’s representation of Washington to the country and the world.

Inslee is a seasoned, skilled, enthusiastic politician. He won a Central Washington seat in Congress in 1992, lost it in the 1994 GOP landslide. He moved to the west side, ran and lost in the 1996 Democratic primary for governor. He unseated Republican Rep. U.S. Rick White in 1998, and won a 2012 race for governor in which he trailed GOP Attorney General Rob McKenna in polls for much of the year.

Republicans have repeatedly shown fury that they keep losing to this guy, and McKenna alumni have launched a sarcasm-laden, boilerplate partisan website called Shift Washington.

The state Democratic Party has taken to ridiculing Bryant on everything from low fundraising numbers to seeking to tie him to unpopular national Republican candidates and policies.

Bryant is, however, the ideal receptacle for voters dissatisfied with Inslee. He is a successful businessman who has worked trade on both sides of the Cascades. He is an outdoorsman, and reaches back in time to pick his Republican heroes — Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. He has no apparent ideological agenda, but has promised a top-to-bottom review of a state bureaucracy that has operated under Democratic governors for 31 years.

It will be difficult for Democratic-aligned groups, as is their wont, to label Bryant as one who wants to keep the women of Washington barefoot and pregnant. He is running a race notably less uptight than the 2012 McKenna campaign, which proved vulnerable to harassment.

As Elway notes, there are more Democrats than Republicans in Washington. No Republican presidential candidate has carried the Evergreen State since Ronald Reagan in 1984.

Still, the state has experienced a succession of close races for Governor. Chris Gregoire won by a margin of 133 votes in 2004.